With the development and popularity of intelligent terminals, an increasing number of application scenarios need passive positioning technology, such as location sharing, track log and instant prompt of surrounding points of interest.
Passive positioning generally refers to a situation in which a background application of a terminal continuously collects and reports position information of a user whereas a server locates a current position of the user according to the position information reported by the terminal and sends a corresponding push message to the user. Normally, the passive positioning may be a round-the-clock location application technology that is based on content and hotspots subscribed by a user, which may obtain position information using positioning technologies such as GPS (Global Positioning System), WIFI, base stations, beacons, etc. The passive positioning is able to be operated under a variety of network conditions at all time, and can actively detect that the user is entering a subscribed hotspot and trigger a display of content of a corresponding application of the terminal. For example, the displayed content may be information of a vacant seat in a cinema that will be open after thirty minutes, discount information of some fresh food of a certain supermarket evening sale, and coupon information of a newly opened restaurant, etc.
A common solution used by existing passive positioning technologies mainly includes collecting and reporting position information at all time by a positioning application of a terminal after the application is activated. In order to obtain information of a current position of a user as accurately as possible and to satisfy a service requirement of an application scenario where the user is located, the existing passive positioning technologies typically collect position information of the user in short and fixed time intervals. This position information collection method may cause an application of a terminal to collect and report position data in a very frequent manner. This results in a large power consumption at the terminal of the user, which may even be unacceptable to the user, and greatly reduces the user experience of the passive positioning service. In addition, frequent collection and reporting of position information will also increase the network traffic consumption of the terminal. For example, a passive positioning function configured in a local service APP (Application, APP) will collect and report position data frequently after a user starts the APP, which consumes a large amount of power of the terminal, and may even cause overheating of the terminal device during the usage, and thus degrade the user experience.
Existing methods of collecting position information in passive positioning leads to a large power consumption at a terminal, having a poor user experience.